The GPRS/UMTS is an evolution of the GSM standard to provide packet switched data services to GSM mobile stations. Packet-switched data services are used for transmitting chunks of data or for data transfers of an intermittent or bursty nature. Typical applications for 3GPP packet service include Internet browsing, wireless e-mail, and credit card processing, etc.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating typical 3GPP packet architecture. Referring to FIG. 1, user equipment (UE) 101 is communicatively coupled to a radio network controller (RNC) 102 of a radio access network (RAN) 103. In order to access other networks such as Internet 107 and/or operator services node 108, UE 101 has to go through 3GPP packet core network 106. Typically, 3GPP packet core network 106 includes a serving GPRS support node (SGSN) 104 and a gateway GPRS support node (GGSN) 105. These support node SGSN and gateway node GGSN relay communications between a user terminal (or source mobile station) and a destination.
Note that typically, there will be multiple SGSNs associated with a GGSN, multiple RNCs associated with a SGSN, and multiple UEs associated with an RNC in a hierarchical structure (not shown). Thus, when traffic from the UEs increases, the traffic imposed on higher level nodes (e.g., SGSN and/or GGSN) in the hierarchical structure will be exponentially increased.
Based on an analysis of mobile broadband data traffic patterns, a majority of traffic from UEs is Internet bound traffic, which does not benefit from session anchoring in a traditional mobile packet core. Making the Internet bound traffic traverse the SGSN and GGSN uses SGSN/GGSN resources and will add unnecessary delays to the Internet traffic. With the increase in mobile broadband traffic, the built-in hierarchy in the existing architecture results in more investment in SGSNs, GGSNs, and the transmission network from a RAN to a core network without exploiting the nomadic and Internet nature of traffic.